Hydraulic fracturing in shale wells can and should be optimized. A “One Size Fits All” approach to design and implementation of hydraulic fracturing jobs in shale and other unconventional wells fails to take full advantage of their production potentials.
Hydraulic fracturing in Marcellus Shale—Shale reservoirs are characterized by extremely low permeability rock that has a number of unique attributes, including high organic content, high clay content, extremely fine grain size, plate-like microporosity, and little to no macroporosity, all coupled with Darcy and Fickian flow through the rock matrix.
This combination of traits has led to the evolution of hydraulic fracture stimulation involving high rates, low-viscosities, and large volumes of proppant. The stimulation design for plays such as Marcellus Shale is drastically different than anything else that has been performed in the past.
The common practice in Marcellus shale is pumping water, sand and other additives under high pressure into the formation to create massive fractures. The slurry is approximately 99% water and sand, along with a small amount of special-purpose additives. The newly created fractures are “propped” open by the sand, which allows the natural gas to flow into the wellbore and be collected at the surface”.
OILFIELD DATA MINING—Data mining is the process of extracting hidden patterns from data. As more data is gathered in the oilfield, data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform this data into information and knowledge that can be used effectively during the decision making process.
It is becoming more and more evident that operators can create strategic advantages over their competitors by making use of data mining to get important insights from the data they collect.